Aisling O’Loughlin Time to ditch social media for good?
OK, let’s try this one more time with feeling. On the count of three, everybody throws their mobile phone down the toilet. One. Two. Three. Nope, still not ready. Oh dear. We’ve got a bit of a way to go.
How about watching The Social Dilemma on Netflix? That should do the trick. I very nearly deleted the last vestiges of my social media presence, until I didn’t. Couldn’t. Wouldn’t. The index finger hovered and then I thought, surely I’m immune to the unintended consequences of algorithms like hatefulness and simmering civil war. I’m only interested in spiritual stuff and home interiors. Maybe I’ll be fast-tracked to Enlightenment on a fancy cushion. So I’m lingering on the edges, not quite present, not quite off-line. Loitering without intent.
The documentary is the loudest warning
If we don’t take our attention back we’ll be manipulated out of existence
so far from inside Big Tech for us to wake up and opt out of the Matrix. If we don’t take our attention back, we’ll be manipulated out of existence. It’s that stark. AI is here and it’s running the show through social networks and out of control algorithms. The machines are overpowering human nature, warns Tristan Harris from the Centre of Humane Technology, it’s checkmate for humanity. These harbingers, who once played top roles in Facebook, Ins tag ram, Twitter, P inter es te tc, are extremely concerned. They are not holding back.
Suicide rates among teenage girls are up 70 per cent since 2011 in comparison to the beginning of the millennium, with celebrities like Selena Gomez regularly deleting her account only to return. They always come back. ‘It’s like they want to cut to your soul. Imagine all the insecurities that you already feel about yourself and having someone write a paragraph pointing out every little thing,’ revealed the star about her reaction to negative comments.
The doc blames social media for the genocide in Myanmar, where the military used Facebook to incite hatred against the Rohingya muslims. There’s nothing like seeing rows of dead children to stop you in your tracks. It says the Russian government simply used Facebook’s tools for nefarious purposes in the last US Presidential election.
An MIT study revealed that fake news on Twitter spreads six times faster than true news. This means false information makes Big Tech more money. It’s the Disinformation for Profit Business Model and it’s threatening democracies the world over, creating polarisation and radicalisation.
So what are our options, apart from dumping our phones down the toilet? Shoshana Zuboff, Harvard Business School author of The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, says these social media giants need to be outlawed. They pose that big a threat to our survival. At the very least, it’s time for regulation. Not self-regulation.
There’s no fiscal reason to change and it’s all about the dollar. Our attention is the product. Or, as tech reformer Jaron Lanier puts it: ‘It’s the gradual, slight, imperceptible change in our own behaviour and perception, that’s the product.’
His advice: Delete your social media accounts, reclaim your life, give your focus and attention to things you love that make you happy and don’t allow yourself to be programmed by the big machine to keep advertisers happy. At the very least, turn off notifications, vary your news sources, talk to people with different perspectives and don’t give in to hatefulness.